Wichita

As broadcast on TCM, Jacques Tourneur's 1955 Western, Wichita, seems highly prosaic.  In part, this effect arises from the fact that the film was made in carefully composed Cinemascope but has been hacked down to a standard aspect ratio for TV consumption.  (Chris Fujiwara, the author of an excellent book on Tourneur, has seen the film projected in Cinemascope and describes the photography as brilliant and superbly designed.)  The movie begins with a Hans Salter ballad sung by Tex Ritter -- the lyrics extol the efforts of Wyatt Earp in transforming Wichita into a "very nice town", a phrase that is prosaic in the extreme and, indeed, damning with faint praise.  The movie's landscapes are consistent with central Kansas -- we see barren grass-covered hills with no trees in sight, nothing sublime or majestic about this part of the (mid)-West.  Joel McCrea plays Wyatt Earp and seems a little bit too old and placid for the role -- he is surely much too old to be a plausible suitor for the film's romantic interest, Vera Miles.  I'm sure that I have written about this movie before, somewhere in the bowels of this very web-site, and must admit that I didn't recall seeing the picture until the phrase "a very nice town" jarred my ears.  Indeed, there's not much that is memorable in the film.  That said, not every picture has to scale the heights of Parnassus and Wichita is thoughtful, beautifully crafted, and retains the viewers' interest from beginning to end.  Early in his career as a lawman, Wyatt Earp encounters some cowpokes driving a herd of cattle toward Wichita.  Two of the cowpokes try to rob Earp of his nest-egg, money that he is carrying to Wichita so that he can buy a business.  (One of the bad guys is played by Lloyd Bridges).  This establishes enmity between Earp and the cowboys.  Later the cowboys ride into town like an invading army of Goths.  After getting drunk, they "hurrah" the town -- that is, galloping their horses through storefronts and wildly firing their guns in the air.  A stray shot kills a little boy and Earp, who has previously refused to serve as sheriff in  the town, takes up the badge and suppresses the riot (aided by his friend, Bat Masterson).  This heightens the cowboy's hatred of the gunfighter now turned lawman, hatred that is further exacerbated when Earp declares Wichita a "gun-free" city.  There are further stand-offs and, in the end, Earp, rather predictably, kills off the leading bad guys and establishes peace in the city.  The film's tension arises from the fact that it is morally ambiguous.  The cowboys aren't really bad but, merely, drunk, disorderly, and reckless -- individually, they're hospitable and generous.   The townsfolk look to Earp to establish order but once he bans guns within the city limits, this threatens the saloon- and brothel-keeper's livelihood --  there is a risk the cowpokes will boycott the town.  In the end, Earp's chief adversaries are the town's mayor and its leading citizens, most notably Doc Black played by the surly Edgar Buchanan -- indeed, one of these men has gone so far as to hire assassins to murder the sheriff.   There's a feckless, alcoholic newspaper publisher, saloon-girls galore who prod the cowpokes to violence, and genteel citizens hiding in their houses as the drunken mob of cowboys shoots the town to pieces.  The film's interest lies in its politics -- it's position with respect to gun control and the fact that a reforming lawman ends up being despised and threatened by those who put him in power in the first place.  A number of scenes rely on indirection or outright deceit -- a deadly confrontation between assassins and Earp turns to joviality when we discover that the dead-eyed killers are his brothers (Peter Graves plays the role of Morgan Earp).  In the film's penultimate scene, women wildly slash open a big burlap sack, a sinister-looking gesture, that also resolves into joyousness when we see that the sacks contain rice to be flung at Earp and his new bride.  The final two gun battles are botched -- we can't tell the relationship between the belligerent parties in the film's topography.  (In the first of these fights, Earp kills some bad guys by pointing his six-shooter at them when they are at long-gun range -- this looks ridiculous.)  Fujiwara's account of the film suggest that these defects, however, arise from the fact that the image has been cut down by one-third at least -- we are simply not seeing what the director wanted us to see.  At one point in the film, someone says quite reasonably:  "Men who aren't carrying guns can't shoot one another," a statement that is perfectly sound and true.